\u00a0 Catalina Island is 22 miles from Los Angeles, 33 miles from Long Beach and 34 miles from Newport Beach \u2013 it is not <\/i>26 miles from any port.<\/p>\n \u2018Water all around it everywhere\u2019<\/i> \u2013 Isn\u2019t this a little superfluous?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t an island, by definition, a land mass that has water all around it \u2013 everywhere?<\/p>\n I can leave the wings but I\u2019ll need the guitar for romance.<\/i>\u00a0 This seems to suggest that if their little sister had borrowed their water wings for the weekend, they could leave them and use a guitar to get over to the island.\u00a0 Acoustical guitars are made\u00a0of wood and can be\u00a0fairly buoyant, and perhaps even act as a floatation device, but the guitar would have been rendered\u00a0unplayable after upwards of 8-10 hours in salt water.\u00a0 So these \u2018Preps\u2019, who apparently were striking out with women at home, were probably not going to have much better luck on Catalina.<\/p>\n Forty kilometers in a leaky old boat, any old thing that will stay afloat <\/i>\u00a0\u00a0Finally the boys have the right idea here by looking into a boat; the fact that\u00a0they’d settle for one that is\u00a0old and leaky speaks volumes\u00a0about their nautical acumen.\u00a0 Why they\u2019ve switched to the metric system for measurement here I\u2019m not sure, but forty kilometers is equal to a little more than 24 miles, still leaving them far short of their chosen destination.<\/p>\n While looking at the logic of the lyrics was a bit unsettling, finishing the song did indeed rid me of\u00a0my earworm.\u00a0 How was Catalina?\u00a0 Very enjoyable, so enjoyable in fact that I\u2019m headed back there to spend the New Year\u2019s weekend \u2013 at that time I\u2019ll try to give you more of a flavor for the island itself, assuming I can get that damn song out of my head.<\/p>\n \u00a0PS: I actually like\u00a0the song and The Four Preps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My most recent \u2018road trip\u2019 took me off the road and on the water, to Santa Catalina Island. \u00a0It is a very interesting island, to say the least. It has a casino where gambling is banned … read more![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/catalina1.jpg\" "\\"catalina\\"")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You may know the island from the song \u201926 Miles\u2019<\/i>, made famous by the Four Preps in 1958.\u00a0 I\u2019m warning you right now, if you remember the song and you go to Catalina, that song will be playing in your head \u2013 THE WHOLE TIME YOU\u2019RE THERE!\u00a0 I believe that\u2019s called an \u2018earworm\u2019<\/i> \u2013 it felt more like ringworm.<\/i>\u00a0 Like most people my age, I remember some of the lyrics to the song, but not all of them, so I ended up humming the words I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 Out of frustration of this song being on \u2018replay\u2019 in my head for three days, I decided to look up the real lyrics.\u00a0 It is said\u00a0that the cure for earworm\u00a0is to finish the song and I couldn\u2019t finish the song until I looked up the actual lyrics.\u00a0 So I did.\u00a0 I was not surprised to find that these 1950 classically banal lyrics were . . . well, classically banal as well as factually inaccurate, starting with the title.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u2018I\u2019d swim with just some water wings and my guitar\u2019<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 The song was written\u00a0by Four Prep members, Bruce Belland and Glen Larson, two mature Southern California young men. \u00a0I think we get a clue to their desperation when they suggest that they\u2019ll swim 26 miles (or whatever) to find romance and that they\u2019ll use water wings to do so.\u00a0 Two men swimming to Catalina with water wings really doesn\u2019t call up an image of the kind of men women would be looking to hook up with, even in the 50s.\u00a0 But if for some reason they were not able to navigate the 26 miles in water wings . . .<\/p>\n<\/a>I\u2019d work for anyone even the Navy, who would float me to my island dream . . . <\/i>\u00a0\u00a0This plan seems a bit half-baked and completely irrational, but that really doesn\u2019t surprise us at this point, does it?\u00a0 Joining the navy would probably mean a four-year commitment and training who knows where.\u00a0 After basic training their chances of getting deployed to Catalina would have been non-existent.<\/p>\n